Well... EA Had A Press Conference and Battlefield looked great

So, we just had a chance to see what EA had in store for its E3 Lineup. I have to say it was an underwhelming look at a lot of these games. So, let's take a look at the lineup:

EA started off with Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare, and I have to say that the game looked really impressive. If you like games like Trenched and Dungeon Defenders this seems like it is right up your alley. The game looked great running on the Frostbite engine while keeping true to the style and whimsy of the Plants vs. Zombie games. I really loved when they called in a Corn Strike. It definitely has the comedy that you would expect from this, and then Popcap announced Peggle 2. I really had a lot of fun with Peggle, but they didn't really show anything about the game. I'm interested in seeing what's in store for that.

We then saw some more of Respawn Entertainment's Titanfall, which the internet seems to be going crazy over, and I can't help but feel very underwhelmed. It doesn't look like a bad game at all, but it seems very much like Call of Duty with mechs. I thought I would be a lot more excited for this game, but I was actually much more impressed with Battlefield 4 later in the press conference.

They gave us a bunch of boring engine spiel. Yes, the engines look great, but will the average consumer care if these games are made with Frostbite 3 and the Ignite engine? Probably not. They just want to see what these games are going to look like. This did segway into a very short trailer looking at Star Wars Battlefront and it's exciting that DICE is working on this. However, there was nothing to show yet as it's probably still early on in development. This led us to a pretty lengthy demo on Need For Speed Rivals and it doesn't look like anything different. If you like Need For Speed then you might be interested, and then they showed footage from the Need For Speed movie with Aaron Paul, and I love Aaron Paul but who really cares?

They showed us a bit of Dragon Age: Inquisition and it looks cool, but we haven't seen quite enough yet to get me excited. They are taking their time with it coming out in 2014 and that's a good thing. They then went on to show a whole bunch of sports stuff that was all pretty dumb. I realize you have to talk about sports, and I'm alright with that, but they spent a ton of time talking about dribble and bounce physics for NBA LIve 14. We saw Madden, FIFA, and UFC which all looked like the gameplay was pre-rendered and not actual gameplay. This made it a pretty disappointing showing in my view, but maybe we'll see some real footage later in the week for people who care.

Let's talk about Battlefield 4, because that game looked pretty incredible. I honestly expected it to be the same as every other modern military shooter we have been seeing so far, but it had a lot of noteworthy features. They showed off the destructible nature of the maps in multiplayer, and it looked pretty damn great. You could blow out an underground support beam to take out tanks, and you could even take out entire building which could change up the way you play the map completely. The game also had a ton of verticality that looked really impressive as you were fighting in a huge skyscraper and could see the entire map from above. I was pleasantly impressed with Battlefield 4 when I was about the write off the game completely. It was a great way to end the conference and then they revealed Mirror's Edge 2 with a short teaser trailer. It's great to see Mirror's Edge see its return and the hope is for a lack of shooting in the game.

Overall, EA's conference was a pretty boring affair. They had a great opening with Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare and closed out strong with Battlefield 4 and Mirror's Edge 2. I think EA needs to a lot more to get people excited about their some of their other franchises. It's also a shame that they never give hockey its due when they show off their sports games. Maybe we'll see some more from them tonight at Sony's Conference.